[lbo-talk] Trotskyite fetishization of the workplace

[Joseph Catron]

In an exchange earlier today with a member of one of New York City's
innumerable Trotskyite microsects, I was accused of middle-class
douchebaggery for opining that all workers should demand the abolition
of the coal industry. He harped incessantly on the United Mine
Workers; I avoided the question of climate change altogether, as I
don't really understand the science behind it, but noted that
pollution from coal-fired power plants is thought to kill 30,000
Americans per year and constitutes a direct physical assault on every
person who breathes air. I also allowed that maybe him expecting 300
million of the rest of us to subsidize the livelihoods of 240,000
United Mine Workers at the expense of our personal health was a little
unreasonable. Finally, I stated that, as much as his particular
grouplet blathers on incessantly about democracy, there's nothing
particularly democratic about allowing a number that small to
unilaterally make decisions affecting the well-being of so many. And
for this I was called a bourgeois wanker, a crypto-Thatcherite goon,
and an agent of the forces of reaction!

What is it with these types, anyway? I'm weak on Trotsky, but did he
ever say anything so silly as that all decisions concerning a
particular industry should be made exclusively by workers within that
industry? Or was this merely one Trotskyite's vulgar rendition?

-- 
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure
mægen lytlað."